Across East, West and Southern Africa, communities are vulnerable to weather and climate related shocks such as storms, flood and drought. These can have a significant impact on lives and livelihoods that can result in a loss of income, homes or lives that may have been avoided if better access and use of weather and climate information services was available.
Ahead of this year’s Conference of Parties (COP28), this week’s Africa Climate Week hosted in Nairobi by the government of Kenya will discuss possible solutions to some of these issues and how organisations can work together to support those affected.
The Met Office manages the Weather and Climate Information Services (WISER) programme, which has been running in Africa since 2015 and has now expanded to include the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Asia Pacific. Thus far, WISER has delivered enhanced access to weather and climate information for over 3.3 million households and achieved in excess of £200 million of socio-economic benefits. Through the co-production and co-design of projects, activities and services, the WISER programme has realised a host of outcomes for those that need them most at local, regional and national scales.
Plans for the expansion of WISER’s work in Africa were announced in 2022 as part of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Africa Regional Climate and Nature (ARCAN) programme and this week several projects worth a combined £4.5 million were confirmed in East and Southern Africa. The WISER Africa programme will aim to provide more than 400,000 farmers and urban and informal settlement dwellers with improved weather and climate information. Plans are also underway to support activities in the Sahel.
WISER Africa will build on the transformational change delivered through WISER to date and provide the opportunity to innovate and expand into new areas and partnerships, while drawing on the lessons learned and best practice from earlier phases of WISER. It will also have a focus on mainstreaming weather and climate information services into policy, planning and decision making to ensure improvements are made and sustained.
It is estimated that WISER Africa will indirectly benefit 3 million people disproportionately impacted by extreme weather, seasonal events and climate change to become more resilient, and will take the form of national, regional and pan-regional engagement with a wide range of stakeholders engaged in weather and climate activities.
Projects announced this week include:
- DARAJA project: Resurgence will lead the DARAJA project to support an inclusive urban early warning initiative spanning cities across East Africa. It will provide early warnings of extreme weather to urban users, particularly marginalised communities based in informal settlements. This builds on the previous phase of DARAJA under the WISER programme, which reached nearly 1 million people and reduced the impact of floods by enabling early responses such as repairing homes and roofs, and cleaning community drains.
- Early Warning for Southern Africa (EWSA): An international team led by the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science and University of Leeds are delivering the EWSA project to transform access to early weather warning systems for urban communities in South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique. This aims to provide weather information to socially disadvantaged urban populations to reduce the damage caused by storms, by building real-time forecasting capacity and tailoring short-term weather forecasts for those that need them most.
- Enhancing Climate Change Resilience in East Africa (ECREA): The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) are leading the ECREA project, which aims to build resilience of people and countries in East Africa to extreme weather and climate change. It will enable better access to weather and climate information services amongst 400,000 bean farmers and other agricultural sector stakeholders.
These projects are part of a wider £49m funding package for climate finance and resilience projects across Africa announced by the FCDO. UK Minister for Development and Africa Andrew Mitchell, said: “Our partnerships with African countries on green investment and climate resilience are growing economies and improving lives. But more action has to be taken, as those least responsible for climate change are increasingly bearing the brunt of its effects.
“The UK is working closely with African partners to fight climate change, boost resilience and help those whose lives are most impacted.”